FRIDAYFor
the third year in a row, The Ultimate Madness came to Huntington West Virginia.
The Huntington Civic Arena which recently had its name changed to Sandy's
Superstore Arena was the location for this indoor competition - the world's
largest 3 man tournament. The fields for 2003 were housed in a new
netting system developed by Brimstone Enterprises. Arch shaped
aluminum cages fully enclosed the Ultimate Airball fields in netting.
The freestanding design of the cages gives them the ability to be set up
anywhere, indoors or out, without needing stakes or guywires for support.
As in years past the 3 sides of the arena were lined with trade show and
vendor displays - Smart Parts, National Paintball Supply and Diablo bringing
in semi trailers.

The Ultimate Madness three-man
event broke out with Friday's well known Top Gun competition played throughout
the day. With 59 contestants the games got underway at 11 AM after
final registrations were received and the schedule generated. The
one on one competition was different than standard events of the type,
the games running more like a tournament than the more common double elimination.
Playing six games for their preliminary rounds, the plan for the semi-finals
was to take the top 16 of the fifty-nine competitors to advance to four
divisions of four, those splitting off for finals of four players facing
off in the traditional round-robin.

A players party, fully
catered and offering free beer to those over the age of 21 was scheduled
for Saturday night. The evening of Saturday greatly anticipated for
the advent of the new playing style of Arenaball, a veritable light show
waiting to happen.

After all six of the preliminary
rounds wrapped up at 2 PM, Frank Connell of Philadelphia Americans fame
went into the semi final round undefeated with 300 points. The Ultimate
Madness is further unique because the teams moving on to the semi-finals
for the Top Gun weren't restricted to the traditional sixteen teams.
Ten players were tied with a score of 200 points. Instead of calculating
tie breaker information, all of these players moved on to the semis, which
increased the semi-finals field to nineteen. The tied players were
ranked for seeding alphabetically.

The semi-final rounds
were set up with three divisions, one holding 7 players, the other two
divisions with six players each. The super division of 7 players
would play 6 games each, the other two divisions would play 5 games.
To move onto the finals, the players would need to be in the top two scorers
of their division. Several top professional players joined Frank
Connell in the semi-final round, Spesh Robinson and Eric Dearman also of
the Philadelphia Americans, JC Whittington and Chris Remuzzi of Bad Company.
Team Strange was also represented by BJ Jolly and Mike Carthy.

Mike Carthy led the semi-final
round undefeated followed by fellow pro players JC Whittington and Chris
Remuzzi. Young Lee Cambron took the fourth place slot after winning
the top points in his bracket. Eric Dearman trailed behind Lee by
ten points and JD Goad brought up the sixth place slot for finals tied
with Eric Dearman.

The
first finals game was played between Chris Remuzzi and JC Whittington,
and finished with Remuzzi getting the pull and hang - and leaving Whittington
live on the field. In many top-gun competitions it would be fine
just to win, but at Madness, that 5 point elimination could be critical.
JD Goad was then defeated by Lee Cambron. Mike Carthy then defeated
Whittington. The next game between Chris Remuzzi and Eric Dearman
was won by Dearman. Carthy took his second victory by defeating Cambron.
Dearman took out Whittington. Mike Carthy fell to Chris Remuzzi,
then Dearman defeated Cambron. JC Whittington made his first win
of the round against JD Goad. In the next game Lee Cambron defeated
Chris Remuzzi to make his first win. Carthy then defeated Goad.
Eric Dearman continued his undefeated winning streak by beating JC Whittington.
This put only Mike Carthy in a position to catch up - the last game to
be played by the pair would be against each other. Chris Remuzzi
posted a win over JD Goad. The game between Carthy and Dearman would
decide the title. If Dearman won, it was his. If Carthy won
they would tie on points, and the tie breaker would go to Carthy for winning
their head to head match. Eric Dearman was victorious pulling the
flag first to ensure points wether or not he survived the game and
winning an Ultimate Airball Field. For Dearman the win was especially
joyous, topping his 2nd place finish in the 2002 Top Gun. In the
final game JC Whittington beat Lee Cambron Jr.

The evening of the first
day wrapped up with the three man teams converging on the fields to walk
the identical six bunker layouts that would host their games starting on
Saturday afternoon.

SATURDAY

The
morning of the three man start dawned with a beautiful blue sky.
The rain of the previous day and night which had drenched the streets of
Huntington had passed, leaving a gorgeous spring day. Being indoors,
the weather didn't effect the tournament at all and games started shortly
after 8 AM. The local Marine Corps brought out a color guard for
the singing of the National Anthem and presenting of the flags. Thank
you gentlemen for taking the time to be here and for serving our country!

The Ulimate Madness promoters,
Milt Call and Paul Bollenbach work hard to ensure that the schedule was
free from games that would result in a bye from a team who had signed up
but didn't show up at the event. In order to acheive this, they produced
the schedules as late as practically possible, generating them quickly
with Schedule Pro software by Jim Quizalla.

Early Saturday morning
the schedules were handed out for the games to be played, the Women's Division
as well as the Rookies. The Novice and Amateur teams would take the
field later in the day for their preliminary games. Six of the preliminary
rounds were planned for completion on Saturday followed by the evening
debut of Arenaball and the players party.

Ten women's teams took
to the fields, the same number of female players as the prior year though
the line up was a bit different, half of the teams were new to the Madness.
Superficial showed again, last year having fielded two teams, Silver taking
the top slot at first, Blue taking 10th, this year Superficial was fielding
a single team. The third place team from 2002, Lady T&A from
the west coast also showed again. Wicked Sistas, fifth place winner
from the prior year headed out as well as the sixth place winner, Femmes
Fatale. Paint Girls took seventh last year, hungry for a new placement
in 2003. Fallen Angels of New Jersey showed for play again having
played in the first Madness in 2001 and having taken a break from some
of the major events for the past year. Lady Firestorm also was new
to the event as well as Synchronicity and Xtreme Angels. Valkyreis
brought up the challenge after their debut at the PSP Pomona event were
they placed 5th in the co-ed Rookie division.

The rookie teams blossomed
this year at the Madness, going from 51 teams in 2002 to 74 teams in 2003.
The second place rookie team name, though likely not the same team members
of Nemesis Jr. took to the field along with Parental Advisory who placed
16th last year. Hazmat Extreme made a comeback from 2002 where their
total points were not quite enough to make the cut to semi-finals leaving
them with a 315 at the end of the 2002 Madness. With such a large
influx of rookie teams and so many new faces, the fields were running in
a new dimension without a basis of knowing how a team might play or who
would come out of the blocks hot.

Coming up on the end of
the second round, the games were working themselves out to wins resulting
in total points being given to one team, the other team often taking home
5 to 10 points after eliminating one or two of the opposing teams.
The scoring system for the three man event gave 5 points per eliminated
player, 15 points for the first flag pull and 30 points for the flag hang.
Madness was unusual from the standard tournaments that penalized a team
for losing players, only focusing on the playerss eliminated from the other
team for a grand total of 60 points possible.

Rules for the Madness
restrict Rookie teams to players who have not played on a national level
for more than a year. Templars were getting some grief for their
placement in the Rookie division, though what teams didn't know is that
the team was made up of the members from the Rookie team Templars II since
the Templars main squad changed names to Next Level.

Through the day Saturday,
field action was shown on four large projection screens in the corners
of the arena. A network of 12 cameras, two for each field was wired
into a central switcher to automatically change views. In addition,
players at home could follow the video network on WARPIG.com, as a webcam
snapshot was taken from the video feed every 30 seconds (top right of this
page.)

The first six rounds of
the preliminary rounds wrapped up for the women and rookies just before
noon on Saturday, clearing the fields for the novice and amateur teams
to take the field.

As
in the women's division, the Amateur division didn't grow from the prior
year but showed with the same number of teams, 32 last year and 31 this
year after discounting the four teams who didn't show but were included
in the schedule. Amateurs making the jump from the novice division
last year were Saints who made 265 points and Murder Inc. who got 145 points.
Nemesis took third last year in the amateur bracket followed by Farside
2 who took 5th, Nasty who was in 6th, Farside who took 7th, and Tippmann
Effect who also made the semi finals last year in 14th place. AGD
Lions and Pride finished 18th and 20th respectively last year, hoping for
a better showing for the Mag shooting boys. Primal Attitude brought
up the last amateur teams who competed last year, aiming for a better slot
than their 19th place. Over two thirds of the amateur teams playing
this year were new to the Ultimate Madness.

Novices, like the Rookies,
showed a huge jump in teams going from 46 teams in 2002 to 72 teams in
this year's competition. Bad Boyz moved up after their first place
rookie finish last year. Followed by the second place rookie team
Nemesis Jr as well as Voodoo who took third. Twizted had 11th place,
Shooter & Looters in 12th and Parental Advisory in 16th. Several
other rookie teams moved up this year, Hazmat, Creek Boys, KY Impact, Kentucky
Magic and WOW. Mantis placed last year in second novice and received
criticism for their seeding at other events where they played as amateur.
Hyperactive showed after a 7th place as well as Blackout and Lethal Injection
in the 11th and 12th placements. Goin Postal, Demonic Factory Nemesis
Black, and SG's all stayed in the novice bracket, hoping to make the break
into the semi finals this year.

Saturday wrapped up about
6 PM after the sixth round of preliminary games but that didn't finish
out the day of paintball. While the fields were cleaned up, the National
field was readied for Arenaball and the banquet room was set up for the
free players party. Promoter Milt Call was greatly encouraged and
excited over the number of spectators lining the nets to the Arenaball
field an hour before it's scheduled start.

At 7:30, players from
Brimstone Smoke played an exhibition Arenaball match as the public debut
of the format. Arenaball is a three player game format, in which
audience participation is allowed, music through the sound system is loud,
and effects and spot lights are used on the otherwise dimly lit field.
The match consists of standard games played back to back, the winner, being
that team that wins four or more out of seven games. Brimstone This
took the match of games then the spectators headed into the ballroom reserved
for the players party for the free food, beer and non-alcoholic drinks.

SUNDAY

The women and rookie divisions
took to the field first thing in the morning after the early morning of
Daylight Savings Time, competing to make the cut to semi-finals.
The ladies, with ten teams, sent home two of the teams, Lady Firestorm
and Paint Girls, the rest moving on to play semi-finals after the novice
and amateur wrapped up their preliminary games. Of the rookies, 18
went on after 16th place was decided at a tie of 325 points. The
rookie division had a three-way tie for 16th place at 325 points.
Since none of the teams had played head to head, the tie-breaker in this
instance, all three of them were advanced giving the rookie semi-final
bracket 18 teams. Two divisions were set up as 5 team semi-finals
while the other two brackets were the standard four team version.
Given that several of the teams would have an advantage since they played
four games over three, it was opted to average the scores of all of the
semi-final games, giving a fair rating of how the teams did during the
semi-final rounds for the 5th through 18th placements. In the case of ties
after the semi-finals were complete, the deciding factor was either a head-to-head
game winner and if they didn't play that head-to-head, the seeding of the
higher ranked team going into the semi-finals broke the tie.

Novices and Amateurs took
to the field just as the women and rookie wrapped up their semi-final rounds
after the completion of their preliminary rounds. As in the rookie
division the cut was not only high at 335, but there was another tie between
two teams sitting at 16th place. Since they didn't play each other,
17 teams advanced to semi-finals with Hyperactive leading the pack with
no losses in their preliminary games. Amateurs had the same story
with a tie at 255 points between two teams sitting at 16th place.
The Union leading the pack of amateurs after dropping one game.

After the ladies geared
back up, they took the field again for their semi-final rounds with Lady
T&A undefeated in their semi-final rounds taking first slot for the
finals. Wicked Sisters, Femmes Fatale and Fallen Angels would join
them in the round robin format finals games. The rookies saw Skeleton
Crew taking first place after one loss, joined by Doc's Raiders Black,
Troya and Misfit Toys Black in the rookie finals. Shindig had a disappointing
finish for the new team, this their first event to play and having only
lost two of their twelve games - awesome showing guys, looking forward
to seeing you later in the season.

While the novice and amateurs
wrapped up their semi final rounds, the women's bracket and rookies played
their final rounds which went quickly, ending up with Femmes Fatale and
Wicked Sistas tying at 125 points. Since the Femmes had won the head-to-head
match, the tournament went to them, the Sistas coming in second, Lady T&A
close behind at 120 points and Fallen Angels making a great showing in
fourth place after their short hiatus. Rookies fought hard in their
final games, Doc's Raiders Black triumphing at two wins and a loss, Misfit
Toys Black right behind them at 115 points. For Doc's Raiders, their
last game was important, they'd calculated that they needed the points
from a flag pull to secure the win. Ben Draper, the team's smallest
player made a sacrifice play and dove out into the open, pulling the flag
to grab their points, and getting eliminated moments later. Skeleton
Crew ended at third place with 80 points right ahead of Troya at 75 for
fourth place.

Novice and amateur teams
finished their semi final rounds with 17 teams each, whittling it down
to four teams to move on to the finals round. Novice team True Colors
Red finished out on top of the group, Submission in second, Asylum Factory
and Bckwoods taking up third and fourth. Amateur team Shooters and
Looters came out on top of the grouping followed by tied teams AGD Lions
and Nasty. Since AGD came into the semi-final rounds seeded ahead
of Nasty, they took the second ranked slot, Nasty in third and Farside
2 taking up the fourth slot.

The fifth through seventeenth
or eighteenth placed rookie, novice and amateur teams were ranked based
on an average of their scores within their brackets to give a fair shake
to the teams who played three games versus the teams who got an extra game
during semi-finals. It caused some confusion at the scoreboard that
totals looked inaccurate, but being fair, the scores were averaged to benefit
all of the teams, not just those who played more games.

Novice finals wrapped
up in record time crowning Backwoods at first place after two wins and
a loss, True Colors Red in second, Asylum Factory, Submission in fourth
place.

Amateur finals finished
shortly after the novice rounds, Farside II sinking the first place win
at 165 points putting AGD Lions in fourth place. Shooters & Looters
took second place followed by Nasty in third.

Thank you to the Smart
Parts crew for fish, lunches and such great company. Sara for the
shoulder and extension cord - I'll see you this week. Gen E's Peg
and Paul for playing taxi, supper, my first slot machine and for advice.
LB and Opie for showing up, being two of the most awesome men in the sport,
for listening and unflagging support. Teams for wearing stickers
- thank you gentlemen for sporting the Pig. Kim & Kim for working
hard on the scoreboard. The promoters for supper the last night and
the kind words you said there. Bill for doing my job of photography
while I helped with the scores when chaos was reigning. And most
of all to my God who comforts when the things go bad.